Free The Vow by Lindsay Chase

failed.
    “Dear God, Reiver, have mercy!”
    “Not this time, my love.” He replaced his hands with his mouth, sucking and nipping with wild abandon until Cecelia shrieked and almost swooned with pleasure. Reiver laughed in triumph as he swept her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, where he flung her down on the smooth scented sheets and dived in after her, imprisoning her body with his own.
    Their mutual passion ignited beyond bearing, the lovers devoured each other with feverish hands and mouths, their rising groans shattering the room’s stillness. When Reiver finally took her, he turned Cecelia over on her knees despite her feeble protestations. Watching her voluptuous curved flanks bounce and rock with his every thrust and her hands clench helplessly at the rumpled sheets, he felt on the verge of exploding.
    His head tipped back and he howled his own release just as Cecelia screamed his name and shuddered along his length.
    Later, when they had slaked their desire with each other’s body, they lay with their limbs entwined beneath a cloud of warm, deep quilts. Reiver wished she would at least congratulate him on the possibility of fatherhood, but she didn’t and wouldn’t. Cecelia had put his other life with Hannah out of her mind.
    To her, it no longer existed, and he had to respect her need to deny it.
    Reiver propped himself up on one elbow and drank in Cecelia’s delicate loveliness, her heart-shaped face and rosebud mouth. “It’s getting late. I have to go.”
    “Must you?” she murmured, running her small hands over his muscular chest.
    “I suppose I could stay a little longer.”

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    Lindsay Chase
    And he did.

    On Christmas morning, while the rest of the family was at church services, Hannah took one last look at her gift to Reiver—the framed engraved portrait of herself that Samuel had done—before wrapping it.
    She stared at it in wonder. Surely the beautiful woman regarding the world through grave eyes was not her.
    When she had protested to the artist that he had misrepresented her, Samuel smiled enigmatically and said, “But that is how I think you will look one day.”
    Hannah ran her fingertips along the smooth wooden frame. Is this how Samuel saw her, as a beautiful woman with such a worldly, knowing air far beyond Hannah’s limited experience of life? She didn’t feel particularly worldly or knowing.
    A sudden bout of the nausea that had been plaguing her all morning—
    indeed for the past month—sent Hannah running for the washbasin. When she finished retching, she rinsed her mouth and lay dawn for a while, then returned to wrapping her husband’s gift.
    No sooner did she take it downstairs than she heard the front door open and the rest of the family came trooping in, stamping their feet noisily to shake the snow from their boots and mumble, “Brrr!” and “Damn, it’s cold outside!”
    “How was Reverend Crane’s sermon?” Hannah asked.
    “So boring I fell asleep,” Reiver replied.
    Samuel laughed. “You have to learn to sleep with your eyes open, as I do, then no one would glare at you so disapprovingly.”
    Mrs. Hardy said, “We saw your aunt and uncle in church.”
    “Did they ask after me?” Hannah said.
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    The Vow
    Reiver replied, “They bustled off before we could speak to them.”
    “Just as well,” Hannah said.
    James removed his hat and unwound his scarf. “Are you feeling better, Hannah?”
    “Much better,” she replied, collecting coats. “I was sorry to miss the service.”
    “If the Good Lord can’t forgive you under the circumstances…” Mrs. Hardy brushed some snow from her silver hair. “Now, let’s sit down to Christmas dinner, shall we?”
    After a sumptuous feast of roast goose, the family gathered in the parlor to exchange gifts.
    Hannah was delighted to see that James and Samuel were pleased with the wool stockings she had knit for them, and she in turn loved the